Tijuana first city in Mexico to switch to digital

This northern border city on Tuesday became the first in Mexico to end analog television broadcasts and switch entirely to digital, ushering in a new era of improved reception and broader programming possibilities.

Mexico’s Federal Telecommunications Commission, known as Cofetel, announced it would move forward with Tijuana’s conversion after determining that more than 90 percent of viewers had access to digital.

For those without previous access to digital broadcasts, Cofetel announced that it had installed descrambler boxes for more than 192,000 households across Tijuana. Cofetel’s written announcement of the switch stated that Tijuana was not only the first city in Mexico to fully convert to digital, but the first in Latin America.

The head of Cofetel, Mony de Swaan, was expected in Tijuana at a ceremony Tuesday night that Baja California Gov. José Guadalupe Osuna Millán and Tijuana Mayor Carlos Bustamante were also scheduled to attend.

The next cities scheduled to change are also near the U.S. border: Mexicali, Nuevo Laredo, Reynosa, Matamoros and Monterrey. Mexico as a whole is expected to complete the transition by December 31, 2015.

Not all were happy with Tijuana’s changeover to digital. Outside City Hall on Tuesday, several dozen protested that they had been left without any television reception. Luis Miguel Krasovsky, a Tijuana attorney, said he is preparing a collective legal action seeking an immediate return to analog broadcasts, claiming that thousands of Tijuana residents did not receive the descrambling boxes.

For those benefiting from the switch, digital offers improved reception and allows for a greater number of channels. By making more efficient use of the broadband spectrum, it also frees up space for wireless service, said Paul Gagnon, director of global TV research for DisplaySearch, a market research and consulting firm.

“It certainly makes sense that they’re going to the border regions first,” Gagnon said of Mexico’s move to digital. “Just on the other side of the border, we’ve completely switched.”

The United States completed its conversion to digital television broadcasts in 2011.

John Eger, a telecommunications lawyer and professor at San Diego State University, said that the switch in Mexico “is a sign that they’re going to convert more and more of their old (telecommunications) infrastructure to new. It’s great they’ve done it, but it’s only a start.”

The decision to move ahead with digital in Mexico was first announced by Mexico’s former president, Felipe Calderón, in 2010. On a visit to Tijuana last October, Calderón said that Tijuana would pioneer the change in Mexico.

In recent months, Cofetel worked with Teletec, a contractor that sent teams of workers to different corners of the city to offer the descrambler boxes free of charge to low-income families that did not have either digital televisions or cable service.

Freeing up band width “is going to create economic development when telecommunications strategies come into place,” Martínez asaid.

He said Mexico's transition to digital television opens new possibilities to expand internet use across Mexico. One of those possibilities involves a plan by Mexico’s federal government for a massive broadband internet network that would be mounted alongside federal electric lines reaching communities across the country, Martínez said.